


every fire is a lesson learned

by sunflashes



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types
Genre: Extremis, F/M, Iron Man 3 Spoilers, Post Iron Man 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 16:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflashes/pseuds/sunflashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony tries to teach Pepper how to control it. Tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every fire is a lesson learned

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ellie Goulding's song _Guns and Horses._

It’s a Sunday.

Pepper wakes up, hair strewn about her face, and says _I’ve pretended this doesn’t exist as long as I could; teach me, oh master of all things science and supernatural._

Tony smiles and presses his face to her freckled shoulder. 

_Yeah_ , he says into her skin, _yeah, I’ll teach you_. 

After a lazy breakfast punctuated by the occasional sardonic comment from JARVIS, they move down to the basement gym Tony had installed in Stark Tower. Pepper wears a sports bra, hair loose and curling lightly around her face like the day Tony could see her skeleton, dark through the red glow swirling and pulsing under her skin. 

“What?” Pepper asks, sinking deeply into a lunging stretch. 

“Nothing,” Tony lies. He doesn’t know if he can take seeing it again; he knows that it was ultimately his doing, the uncontrolled heat searing through Pepper’s bones. “You’re just beautiful.”

“So’re you, Tony,” Pepper quips and smirks slightly. 

“You ready to do this?” Tony throws a few experimental punches at nothing in particular. 

“You bet.” Pepper swings a kick at that same invisible target that sweeps her entire body around in a fluid arc. 

They move together in almost meditative synch to reintegrate themselves into combat with each other. Their punches are not pulled; the blocks professional and efficient. 

Tony pushes a button on the wall as he uses it as leverage against Pepper’s spinning kicks, and a section of the wall next to the door slides back to reveal his suit. He barks at JARVIS and the suit flies to him, sealing itself to his body and molding to fit him. 

“Okay, I’m strapped in—“ Tony grunts to Pepper as a well-placed punch from her left clips his head. “Okay, hi there, want to amp it up?” 

“Okay,” Pepper says, a flicker of red starting in her chest. She lets it spread through her arms and down her torso. It sparks in her toes as she arcs a perfect kick that Tony dodges with almost as much precision as the mark Pepper’s foot makes when it hits the mat on its way back down. 

“Whoa, you’re singeing shit,” Tony cautions, but Pepper chooses not to hear him. Smoke is coming off her skin and the contact between their limbs sparks. 

She’s laughing, and her skin is rippled through with veins of pure red-gold. She is luminous, shot through with liquid light, burning hard and melting fissures into Tony’s armor. The fighting is not fighting anymore. They dance; Pepper bends backward over Tony’s arm in a dip, her back one sinuous curve and she is white-hot. 

No, actually, she is white hot and Tony’s suit is sounding all sorts of alarms. 

She twirls out from Tony’s grasp, spinning about on her toes and laughing, face raised, eyes closed, and Tony sees the light in her chest intensify.

He barely has time to think _oh my god, that is her heart—_

He hits the wall and it knocks the breath out of him. He can’t catch it back; he is immersed underwater and the pressure is crushing the suit and the debris is crushing him; he is alone on the highway tumbling from his car and curled up beside his car thinking his heart is stopping and moaning high and soft into his wrists before he sinks his teeth into the skin there to make himself stop; he is falling. 

He is falling through the rip in the sky cleaved by an angry god, he is falling from his own crumbling home into the sea, he is watching Pepper fall. 

The breath roars back into his lungs, eyes rushing back into watering focus, and he coughs it back out again. His forehead stings and he can’t move his left leg. 

“Pepper—“ He croaks, and the room is filled with smoke. Chunks of debris fall from the columns and ceiling. Things are on fire. Mats. Punching bags. A buzz blares somewhere in the distance warning, warning, warning. Tony’s ears are ringing. The back of his head is barely cobbled together by a dull, throbbing ache. 

He turns his head to the side to avoid the smoke, blinking furiously and coughing wetly, is that blood? 

The wall to his left is dented. That’s where he hit it. 

The other walls are intact. 

“Pep—“ Tony coughs. 

He turns his head and sees it. The Rose Hill, Tennessee divot in the floor, pieces of stone crumbling on its edges. 

He inhales, exhales, inhales, and screams. 

He knows what Francis Bacon wanted to capture in his twisted paintings of grotesquely open mouths. 

He knows he has a broken rib. 

He screams and screams until Rhodey and the paramedics arrive. He doesn’t know how long it took for them to get there. 

He inhales in a fit of convulsions. 

“NO—“ 

His voice is going, but he has curled himself up and continues to scream and won’t let them touch him even though he can feel his own blood slick on the floor beneath him, on his lips. 

It’s a Sunday, and Pepper was beautiful. 

Was.


End file.
